Rassegna Stampa Olimpias

Rassegna Stampa Olimpias
Settimana 14: 08-04-2016
Wabi comunicazione d’impresa
Rassegna Stampa Olimpias
Settimana 14: 08-04-2016
SOMMARIO
Olimpias
Gentile utente, non ci sono aggiornamenti in questa sezione della rassegna
stampa
Competitor
•
•
Miroglio leader in Europa grazie alla stampa digitale
Miroglio investe oltre 20 milioni nel tessile. E i conti si risollevano
Settore
•
•
•
•
•
•
Levi Strauss uses waste nylon in sustainable jeans
Comment le jeans mediterraneen a esseime
Il future è nelle filiere globali
A new future for fabric: US textile industry turns to technology for
its revival
Fallen Croatian Textile Company Weaves New Future
Italian wool textile sector seeks urgent action on mulesing and
animal welfare
Wabi comunicazione d’impresa
Rassegna Stampa Olimpias
Settimana 14: 08-04-2016
Olimpias
Gentile utente, non ci sono aggiornamenti in questa sezione della rassegna stampa
Wabi comunicazione d’impresa
Rassegna Stampa Olimpias
Settimana 14: 08-04-2016
Competitor
Wabi comunicazione d’impresa
Rassegna Stampa Olimpias
Settimana 14: 08-04-2016
giovedì 7 aprile 2016
Miroglio investe oltre 20 milioni nel tessile. E i conti si
risollevano
Il Gruppo Miroglio traccia un primo bilancio della fase di profonda ristrutturazione che ha attraversato negli ultimi anni.
«Abbiamo scelto di investire oltre 20 milioni di euro nel tessile -spiega l’a.d. Daniel Winteler - per garantire sostenibilità,
ambientale ed economica, al business grazie all’innovazione tecnologica, tanto nella stampa su tessuto quanto nella
stampa sublimatica (utilizzata soprattutto per la decorazione dei tessuti sintetici, ndr)». Migliorano in modo significativo i
conti.
In particolare, gli investimenti hanno riguardato la stampa su tessuto e la stampa sublimatica (utilizzata soprattutto per la
decorazione dei tessuti sintetici, ndr)
Questo, in sintesi, il messaggio che emerge da un articolo apparso oggi, 7 aprile, su Il Sole 24 Ore, che ha intervistato
l’amministratore delegato del gruppo del tessile-abbigliamento di Alba, Daniel Winteler, e altri suoi manager.
«La trasformazione ci ha permesso di mantenere la produzione made in Italy, garantendo alti standard di qualità e prezzi
competitivi, anche rispetto alla concorrenza asiatica», ha detto Winteler al quotidiano di Confindustria.
Nel solo stabilimento di Govone, il più grande impianto per la stampa tessile d’Europa, vengono stampati 15 milioni di
metri di tessuto l’anno: qui nasce la collezione Miroglio Textile e sempre qui viene prodotta una parte dei tessuti per i
grandi gruppi del fashion internazionale, come Inditex (Zara).
I conti del gruppo si sono risollevati: il rosso si è ridotto a dieci milioni di euro rispetto al centinaio di due anni fa, l’ebit è
tornato in positivo e la posizione finanziaria è migliorata del 20%, superando i 200 milioni di euro di cassa. Miroglio ha
registrato un fatturato complessivo di circa 650 milioni di euro nel 2015.
Anche i marchi fashion nel portfolio dell’azienda sono quasi tutti tornati alla redditività: quello che ha performato meglio
è Fiorella Rubino. «Le sfide future arriveranno proprio da questo ambito e in particolare dal retail, dove sta cambiando
tutto, a cominciare dal peso dell’e-commerce e dei player digitali, destinati a diventare competitor delle aziende
tradizionali della distribuzione», è la visione di Winteler.
Wabi comunicazione d’impresa
Rassegna Stampa Olimpias
Settimana 14: 08-04-2016
SETTORE
Wabi comunicazione d’impresa
Rassegna Stampa Olimpias
Settimana 14: 08-04-2016
Wabi comunicazione d’impresa
Rassegna Stampa Olimpias
Settimana 14: 08-04-2016
Wabi comunicazione d’impresa
Rassegna Stampa Olimpias
Settimana 14: 08-04-2016
Wabi comunicazione d’impresa
Rassegna Stampa Olimpias
Settimana 14: 08-04-2016
Wabi comunicazione d’impresa
Rassegna Stampa Olimpias
Settimana 14: 08-04-2016
Feature 07 Apr 16
Fallen Croatian Textile Company Weaves
New Future
The iconic textile company Kamensko fell victims to the privatization blunders of the 1990s – but
some of its former workers are not ready to say goodbye.
Sven Milekic
BIRN
Zagreb
6,500 square metres former factory alone waits for new owner. | Photo: BIRN/Sven Milekic
When the administrator of the textile company Kamensko last week said the company
would be sold at last, five years after declaring bankruptcy, it raised hopes among the
company's former workers that they will finally get years of unpaid salaries.
Anni Aurei ltd, a private firm founded earlier this year by the private construction company
Radnik, is buying Kamensko for 3.2 million euros. The buyer will get 6,500 square metres
that Kamensko owns in an attractive location in the centre of Zagreb, overseeing a park.
The value of the land was earlier estimated at around 9.8 million euros, but at the same
time the debt of the company - including unpaid salaries, taxes and contributions - grew to
11 million euros by October 2010, which is when Kamensko declared bankruptcy.
“This money should go to us, we’ve earned it. Why would the state collect its debt before
us?” Djurdja Grozaj, who worked for the company for 34 years, told BIRN. She explained
that the company still owes her five salaries and half of her severance pay.
For Djurdja, as well as many others, the case of Kamensko is a prime example of a once
successful company that was privatized at the end of the communist regime in the 1990s
and then got lost in Croatia’s uneven transition to a market economy.
Wabi comunicazione d’impresa
Rassegna Stampa Olimpias
Settimana 14: 08-04-2016
Graffitti 'Support for Kamensko Working Women' fading as well as the popular support for them. |
Photo: BIRN/Sven Milekic
There are hundreds of similar cases of companies across former Yugoslavia that withered
away due to flawed privatization, poor management, political influence, loss of markets or
other reasons.
“The state is responsible for everything that has taken place and for allowing it to happen,”
Djurdja said.
Kamensko was one of many companies established during the industrial boom in
communist Yugoslavia, which started after the end of World War II.
It started working in 1950 as a textile factory in the centre of Zagreb, next to the square
dedicated to France, facing the old 19th-century Austro-Hungarian barracks.
In its glory days in the 1980s, 2,500 mostly female employees worked in two or
occasionally three shifts, tailoring and sewing quality clothes for both men and women.
The quality of the work was such that up to 90 per cent of its products were exported to
German and other Western markets.
Kamensko was best known for its men’s suits and it produced models even for such top
brands as Pierre Cardin.
“We were a house of European fashion,” Djurdja said proudly, pointing to the plate with the
Kamensko logo that was erected on the factory entrance in the 1960s.
New working place of Kamensko women. | Photo: BIRN/Sven Milekic
“It was better for us under Socialism, it’s true. We got our salaries paid regularly, always
on the 15th [of the month]. It was never later, only early,” she said.
Even after the demise of communism in former Yugoslavia, when various foreign brands
and newly-opened boutiques became accessible for everyone, MPs, politicians and
businessmen, both older and younger generations, still used to buy their suits and jackets
in Kamensko outlets or even in the factory itself.
Wabi comunicazione d’impresa
Rassegna Stampa Olimpias
Settimana 14: 08-04-2016
At the time, you could get a high-quality limited edition sports jacket for little over 100
euros, topping other brands in terms of quality and affordability.
At the same time, conditions in the company got worse. Most employees earned only
around 250 euros a month, which was only a third of the average Croatian salary at the
time.
Besides the low wages, employees worked longer hours and without a proper airconditioning system, which caused some of them to faint every now and then.
Djurdja proudly showing creation her association made. | Photo: BIRN/Sven Milekic
“It was around the minimum wage and it was almost nothing, but we didn’t know any
better,” Djurdja recalled.
With the break-up of Yugoslavia, Kamensko went through a process of privatisation as did
most other state-owned companies.
The company was fully privatised in 1993. The main stockholders established new
executive and supervisory boards while workers got a chance to buy shares for a price just
below the market value. Later, workers were advised to sell their shares for a lot less than
they had paid for them.
While production continued, the company started sacking workers but still maintained
small but regular salaries for the rest. The real problems for the workers began in 2009,
when for the first time the salaries came late.
“At first it was a few days late, then days turned into weeks, which turned into months. One
cannot live without money; you have to pay for
utilities, food,” Djurdja said.
Kamensko's plate that stood on the factory from 1960s, working women took to their new home. |
Photo: BIRN/Sven Milekic
Wabi comunicazione d’impresa
Rassegna Stampa Olimpias
Settimana 14: 08-04-2016
Stefica Relic, her colleague who worked for 33 years in Kamensko, was one of those who
lost their jobs and struggled to find new ones.
“When we lost our jobs and went to seek new work, no one would take us, since most of
us were over 50. We went through a lot of things,” she told BIRN, recalling her experience
after she applied for a job in a cable company.
"When I said how old I was and that I had three children and so I really needed a job, they
replied that they were ‘not a social welfare institution’,” she said.
Eventually, in late 2009, Kamensko had to borrow 105,000 euros from another private
company, Energa Tehna, just to pay its wages. The company director, and one of the
biggest shareholders, Antun Crlenjak was fined some 3,000 euros in 2011 for not
declaring bankruptcy within the legal period.
Most workers and some of the independent media blamed the government for allowing
such a successful company to go bankrupt, and especially for allowing it to not pay
salaries for several months, and for withholding contributions on salaries for some threeand-a-half years.
Workers tried to stage protests in 2010, but were denied support from their unions, while
most of the mainstream, government-controlled media ignored their demands.
In 2010, when salaries were delayed for several months, a group of 19 workers went on a
hunger strike and slept in the park in front of the factory.
“We were sleeping practically on the concrete. It was six degrees [Celsius], pebbles were
pinching you and you were just waiting for dawn so you could get up and go to the factory,
wash yourself and start working,” Djurdja recalled.
“If we’d died in that park, it would have been a story for a few days and nothing more.
That’s why we decided to stop the hunger strike and start with protests all over again,” she
said.
After the company declared bankruptcy and stopped production in October 2010, a
number of workers established an association called “Open Kamensko” in 2011, after the
City of Zagreb gave them two spaces in the neighbourhood of Knezija, one for an office
and a second for the workshop.
The women bought some machines with donations and started working in cooperation with
some local designers who designed models for them, using Kamensko as a popular name
in the textile industry, but sewing everything – from small corrections on jeans and suits,
up to designed creations.
Wabi comunicazione d’impresa
Rassegna Stampa Olimpias
Settimana 14: 08-04-2016
Italian wool textile sector seeks urgent action on
mulesing and animal welfare
by Terry Sim, 08 April 2016
ITALY’S wool textile industry has had discussion on a call for urgent action from the International Wool Textile
Organisation on sheep welfare standards and mulesing deferred until November.
A delegation from the leading textile federation Sistema Moda Italia – representing the entire Italian supply chain
from topmakers to spinners, weavers and retailers – has asked IWTO to release a worldwide standard for animal
welfare and not mere guidelines.
The SMI motion put to the IWTO Heads of Delegation council meeting at the 85thIWTO Congress in Sydney last
Sunday also strongly suggested inclusion of the use of anaesthetic pain relief before and after sheep are mulesed.
“In other words, what we are recommending is to treat our animals in exactly the same way as a human being who
should undergo any kind of surgery.
“If we do just that, what could we be blamed for then?” the delegation motion said.
Delegation spokesman Claudio Lacchio said he had seen sheep dying of flystrike and recognised that mulesing in
certain areas was “a must”. But if it was demonstrated that sheep could be treated exactly same as a human being
– with pre-operation and post-op pain relief — “anybody can say whatever they like,” he said.
“Mulesing is a must in certain areas, but we must give a credible answer to the consumer, not to animal rights
organisations, that we do things correctly.”
The Italian delegation sought approval and implementation of a sheep welfare standard by all the wool-producing
IWTO country members and relevant certification bodies, possibly before the next IWTO Biella Round Table in
November.
“This is our request, which also has the added advantage of avoiding undue interferences by other “private”
bodies, companies and organizations which are currently creating significant confusion on the market.”
The indirect reference to the position of private organisations trying to impose animal welfare standards on the
industry was followed by the delegation’s contention that the IWTO is the only entity which could and actually
should release a worldwide animal welfare standard for the industry.
Fears that other bodies will take lead on sheep animal welfare
IWTO should not let anybody else take the lead on the issue of animal welfare standards, Mr Lacchio said.
“We are asking IWTO and AWI indirectly to recognise there is a problem on the table and a big one.
“Not to say, ‘No, we are wonderful, everything is fine, you won’t be touched’.”
Wabi comunicazione d’impresa
Rassegna Stampa Olimpias
Settimana 14: 08-04-2016
Mr Lacchio said the problem of animal welfare and mulesing in Australia is still far from solved after several
years. After the delegation tabled their motion, Mr Lacchio said a prominent Australian industry person asked him
why he was attacking the Australian industry.
“He said ‘Why are you raising a problem which is not there? — I said ‘first of all the problem is there’ and he said
to me if you insist on that, there is an option for the growers, to go on cattle,” he said.
“So what if they want to go on cattle, they go on cattle — but you don’t tell me that if I talk about mulesing
people will go on cattle – you solve the problem.”
Mr Lacchio said the delegation was very disappointed that it was seen as “raising troubles for the sake of raising
troubles” in Australia.
“We want the people here (in Australia) to tell the truth – that there is a problem and we are going to solve the
problem by doing this, not that the problem is not there.”
Mr Lacchio said SMI members were getting messages, enquiries and requests every day that the clients – retailers
and big brands – are worried and don’t want to use wool of a particular origin or wool generally, if it is not
guaranteed to be mulesing-free.
“We think this issue is not acknowledged, especially in Australia,” he said.
“There is a little bit of confusion, you’ve got to understand that at retailer level they don’t really care about if there
is pain relief or not — they refer to mulesing in general terms.
“Pain relief does mean something, but they accept wool that is non-mulesed.”
Company requested that wool not be sourced from Australia
To support their motion, the Italians presented a redacted yarn order from a northern European client specifying
that the required yarn must not be from Australian wool. The delegation wanted Australian growers to know there
are wool customers who now did not want to buy Australian wool. Clients were increasingly asking for nonmulesed certificates as a prerequisite, Mr Lacchio said.
“Our feeling is that in Australia in particular the big organisations who should take care of this, they think the
problem is solved and we think the problem is not solved at all.”
Mr Lacchio said IWTO should take the lead and set standards for animal welfare including mulesing in particular,
but has only released guidelines. SMI understood that it could not impose standards in countries or on growers.
“But we fear the lead on this could be taken by other organisations.”
The Italian delegation’s motion to the IWTO said Italian and European processors are disappointed by a neverending list of undelivered promises, unmet deadlines, mistaken assumptions and inadequate conclusions on the
issue of mulesing.
“We don’t feel backed and protected in our efforts to try and promote wool, and European brands are considered
to be quite influential in deciding which kind of raw material is used in the (fashion) collections,” the motion said.
The delegation said it seemed the whole approach and implementation of Australia’s action plan on mulesing
needed to be reconsidered and that the money invested could probably have been spent more wisely.
“(There is) no real sense in continuing to talk about mulesing or not mulesing, we all know it is necessary in some
areas not to let the animals die, we are of course aware of this fact…and no sense in continuing to discuss with
people who would criticize and ban wool regardless.”
Wabi comunicazione d’impresa
Rassegna Stampa Olimpias
Settimana 14: 08-04-2016
“Today the issue is mulesing, tomorrow it will easily be something else, today Australia is under the spotlight,
while tomorrow it will easily be another country,” the motion said.
“Let’s change the approach, let’s be proactive, let’s sell the story that wool has got nothing to hide regarding
animal welfare.”
IWTO sheep welfare guideline launch in September
The proposed launch of IWTO’s sheep welfare guidelines in September at Dumfries House, Scotland, was not too
long, “as long as they address the problem sooner rather than later”, Mr Lacchio said.
“We don’t want to create any political hiccup at the moment, we’ve guaranteed the discussion will take place at
Biella in November.
“But at the same time we think that the process has been very slow, a lot of money has been spent and could have
been spent more wisely.”
Chinese IWTO delegation member Madame Yang Xiaoxiong told the IWTO Congress in Sydney this week that
Chinese consumers understood mulesing was a necessary practice in wool growing, but Mr Lacchio said mulesing
is an issue after 14 years.
The Italian delegation is also seeking support for their motion from other countries within the IWTO.
“We do hope all the players and the countries involved will support this initiative, urging IWTO to take a strong
stance, so as to go beyond an old, defensive and unsatisfactory approach and to embrace instead a positive,
constructive and effective attitude towards animal welfare.”
Sheep Central will next publish IWTO president Peter Ackroyd’s position on many of the issues detailed in this
article.
Wabi comunicazione d’impresa